


adulthood is sometimes when megan is megan in flesh and bone

by kwritten



Category: Laggies (2014)
Genre: Alternate Ending, F/M, Female Friendship, Female-Centric, Gen, POV Female Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-23
Updated: 2015-01-23
Packaged: 2018-03-08 18:51:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3219668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kwritten/pseuds/kwritten
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>an alternate ending that emphasizes Megan's growth and her relationship with Annika; little to no spoilers - if you've seen the preview then you're good</p>
            </blockquote>





	adulthood is sometimes when megan is megan in flesh and bone

_I just wanted to have conversations with people I could connect with._

 

For him, the surreal part was pulling his hand away from hers as they watched their perfect future fly away from them. 

For her, it was finding she was so much more brave than she thought, it was finding that his hand not being in hers _wasn’t_ surreal or scary or anything other than a fucking relief.

(She will never not laugh at the irony that on the day that she finally let go of the girl she was in high school, she was wearing a prom dress and pretending it was a wedding dress and ended up at a prom anyway.) (She can hear him tearfully making a phone call to ‘the group’ as she gets into a cab, she drives away from them all and it’s like she can finally breathe again.)

 

_Ever hear the one about the fully grown woman who started hanging out with a group of pubescent kids?_

 

She found Annika and Misty sitting at a table alone, looking like an advertisement for a parenting book, _What to do when your Teen…_ is too bad ass and independent for you to control anymore. Girls like Annika and Misty should come with a warning label.

_Warning: We Weren’t Born With Fucks To Give_

Misty hadn’t given up on her heels – she had them propped up on the table alongside a pile of silk wraps and discarded purses and heels. Annika’s heels were on the table in front of her. Megan didn’t wear her heels for more than ten minutes at her prom. 

They were laughing. 

Junior was shooting Annika doe-eyes from over the shoulder of his date’s shoulder. She didn’t seem to notice. She was leaning into Misty’s shoulder, tears in her eyes from laughing, her hair falling down around her shoulders (the elaborate up-do obviously forsaken).

 _Great smoky eye,_ Megan said, plopping down in the chair on the other side of Annika. _What are we laughing about?_

 

_I wanted to be the cool mom. The one that takes her to concerts. But the truth is that the cool mom is just a joke._

 

_I’m gonna tell you about some things that I’ve gotten some perspective on recently. First, the math they teach you in school you will never use. Ever. And the second is something I only recently learned and I’m going to be honest with you from now on._

_You owe us that._

_The second thing is that you can’t keep putting aside what you want for some imaginary future. You just gotta suck it up and go with your gut._

Misty snapped her bubblegum, _Speak English._

Megan smiled and stood up, _Okay English. Dance when you want to dance. Dance with who you want to dance with. Sit when you want to sit. And if everyone you know is sitting and they want you to sit with them, but you think you might be the kind of person who dances – then fuck them and dance._

Misty shouted to someone across the dance floor and took off. Megan shook her head. Misty isn’t the one who needed this speech anyway.

Annika raised her perfect eyebrows, _What happened to you anyway?_

_I broke up with my boyfriend._

_Because you kissed my dad?_

_Adults are going to tell you that the people you meet in high school define you – to hold on to these relationships because they are important. But high school friends sometimes are like geometry. They’re really cool and they teach you a lot, but you don’t have to carry them with you forever._

_So… straight up?_

_So straight up if you want to ask Junior to dance – you should do it now. Because tomorrow you won’t be the same person and you might not want to anymore. And that’s okay._

_I don’t think that’s the kind of advice you are supposed to tell me as a responsible adult,_ Annika smiled as she adjusted her cleavage a little. Megan handed over her favorite lipgloss. 

_I never said I was a responsible adult._

Annika said something very self-exposing and awkward and pushed Junior’s date out of the way while doing so. She was an expert of crashing into others while letting her defenses down. Misty wolf-whistled from across the room.

Megan spent the remainder of the dance at the bar with Mrs. Halpsky discussing the credentials involved in being a high school guidance counselor and emails were exchanged and jokes were told (that were understood) and Megan felt like Megan. She didn’t feel like a seventeen year old trapped in a world that was moving on without her. She didn’t feel like a ghost that no longer understood the jokes anymore. 

She was just Megan standing at a bar having a conversation. 

And it felt like Megan was in charge of her moving parts, which was new and scary and felt right.

 

_I had a good feeling about you._

_That makes one of us._

 

In the morning, Megan stood in the kitchen in Annika’s clothes and made Nutella waffles with bananas and drank coffee staring out the window. 

When Craig came in she smiled and said, _I’m thinking high school guidance counselor,_ and handed him a cup of coffee. 

He kissed her cheek and nodded, _I have a colleague whose wife is working at a school in downtown. I’ll give you her number._

Later, she and Annika sat on the porch and watched the rain (Seattle had been uncharacteristically generous for her week of soul-searching and skateboarding) and talked about finals and teen vampire novels and the ridiculousness of one-wear-heels that you don’t even wear and general education requirements and transfer credits. 

They sweet talked Craig into dinner at a new Thai place in the city that night and made him dress nice and everything. She let Annika have a sip of her cocktail and he pretended not to notice. He gave Annika an extra spring roll and she stole his last shrimp. They talked about men who wear socks with sandals and steampunk music and debated the living situation of penguins and planned a trip to Pike’s for pasta and smoked salmon.

 

_It was just nice to talk to someone who gave me a break for once._

 

As she brushed her teeth – standing next to Annika and watching them in the mirror – she contemplated her face. This mirror had only ever seen one Megan. It had never known her in a prom dress, or with a pile of college books in her arm, or with Tony’s arm around her shoulder. This mirror had only ever seen just-Megan.

Like that poem about spring and children. 

It was a nice view, just-Megan without any expectations and with memories shaping her but not defining her.

_That’s what I can give them, what I can tell them in ways that other people can’t._

Craig leaned back on the couch and played with the edge of her sleeve as she talked, _How to fall apart?_

_Everyone falls apart._

_Maybe that’s okay._

_You guys. Like. Get a room. It’s ten in the morning._ Annika peeked her head in the door.

_I own this house._

Megan pat the spot next to her on the couch and slung her legs over Annika’s lap when she sat down, _We’re talking about my career options._

_Yeah how you’re gonna be that weirdo who goes back to high school to relive her glory days?_

_I was totally going to take you to a movie this afternoon but…_

_With what money? Aren’t you like homeless or something?_

_Oh. With your dad’s money._

_Hey!_

_I have plans with Junior anyway._

 

So Megan and Craig laid on the couch most of the day in their pj’s and watched a _Buffy_ marathon and ordered pizza.

 

Sometimes adulthood is getting married and having a professionally choreographed first dance as a couple.

Sometimes adulthood is letting go of your adolescent aspirations by hanging out with a bunch of teenagers and realizing that understanding them doesn’t make you one of them and being comfortable with them doesn’t make you less of an adult. (Who said teenagers were self-aware? Fucking no one ever, that’s who.) (She knows the difference now between being the teen on the skateboard and being the adult attempting a flip in the driveway, between being the class clown or most likely to star on SNL and the adult using a banana as a lightsaber. The difference is in the mirror staring back at her.)

Sometimes adulthood is holding onto the hopes and dreams you had and making them come true, forcing the world to give you want and taking no prisoners, and sometimes adulthood is walking away from those dreams because you aren’t the same person and want different things – new things.

Sometimes adulthood is lying on the couch on a Sunday watching a teenager kill monsters and eating pizza in your pajamas while you make new plans and sit contentedly in your own body.

 

_I don’t know about my future. So I gave myself a week._

 

Sometimes being an adult is lonely and sometimes it is so full to bursting you can’t stand it and you have to laugh or cry for no reason whatsoever. 

The trick is, no one ever comes up and gives you a sheet of paper that says _Adult_ in embossed letters and then you smile for a camera and the picture is put up on the wall; it’s not a graduation it’s a fluid, changing, evolving _sometimes_.

**Author's Note:**

> a/n: I really, really loved this movie - but I feel like it didn't actually understand it's own point? Most of the reviews talk about Megan being this person who is incapable of growing up, and honestly? I'm calling bullshit. Megan is a 28 year old that doesn't want a fake life in 'adulthood' for the sake of 'adulthood' - at one point she likens this stage of life as being one in which you aren't sure if the people around you don't understand your jokes, or if you are the one who isn't laughing when you are supposed to be. Megan's frustration with the socially-stipulated and enforced definition of adulthood does NOT mean that she 'refuses to grow up' or is an overgrown teenager. It means that she's frustrated with a world full of people who tell jokes she doesn't understand and have conversations that she can't connect to. And sorry not sorry but I completely overidentify with that. So I wrote her a new ending that explores what the film was actually about until the last three minutes.


End file.
